


And Key

by LittleLinor



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Gen, Trauma, V continuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 01:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18436442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: Ibuki escapes the horrors of his mind by letting himself be locked within





	And Key

**Author's Note:**

> LOCK IS BACK AND REAL, GUYS.  
> SO I had to celebrate.  
> (Is the envoy Cosmo Wreath? Is it Destiny Dealer? Is it someone else? who knows... )
> 
> Set just after the delete arc

Inside the Lock, there is silence.  
He had been terrified, the first time, when Messiah's envoy had come to offer him temporary peace, a brief respite from the rotting, whispering voices and memories haunting his mind and his sleep. When the Lock had closed, everything had disappeared, and for a short moment he'd wanted to scream. Scream and scream and scream until he'd faint. Anything to exist. Anything to finally destroy himself and stop existing.  
And then, in the silence, the utter powerlessness had crashed through him, a wave of relief so strong that if he hadn't been held immobile, he would have collapsed.  
Locked, he was powerless. Locked, he was no longer dangerous. Locked, he was useless to those who would have used him again.  
Locked, he was nothing. Silent, deaf, small, immobile. Unreachable.  
The silence was the most gut-slicingly liberating thing he had ever experienced. It was—freedom.  
He hangs, suspended in space and almost in time. There are nightmares raging outside, he knows, the sobering proof that not all of Brandt's essence has been erased. Its imprint on him is too deep, like a brand that can't be removed he has been one with it for too long, maybe. Even if all the deletors had been eliminated, they've shaped him, and those parts of him can't just be removed. How does one cut away whole panels of one's personality? With a knife?  
But no matter what they whisper, when he is locked they cannot reach him. Even if the enemy comes from within, it too is locked, just as powerless as him. So every night, before he can go crazy with the voices still eating at him, he lets the presence of Link Joker lock him inside himself. Where he can't be hurt, and can't hurt others.  
And he sleeps, for the first time in far too many years, without dreams.


End file.
